The “Kill The Gays” bill is infamous around the world for its provision mandating the death penalty for anyone convicted of the “crime” of homosexuality, anyone convicted of same-sex rape, anyone who is classified as a “serial offender,” and even anyone with HIV. It has been sponsored since 2009 by MP David Bahati, perhaps Uganda’s most-infamous lawmaker because of his unwavering homophobia, and was again re-introduced in February to Uganda’s Parliament, but no word since then of its future.

Presumably, sensing inaction, “at the annual conference of the Uganda Joint Christian Council (UJCC), an ecumenical body which brings together the Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox churches, the bishops resolved that it should be brought back from the brink,” GayStar News reports, pointing to a report in Uganda’s Daily Monitor. GayStar News adds:

The UJCC said that the bill was needed to prevent what they called ‘an attack on the Bible and the institution of marriage’.

The Vatican came out strongly and publicly against the bill and, Wikileaks revealed, even lobbied against it.

Uganda watchers say that the change by the Ugandan Catholic church is ‘very serious’ and that the UJCC resolution was pushed by an Anglican bishop.

Another concern is that, according to the East African, Ugandan President Yowari Museveni is backing his wife, Janet, to take over from him in 2016.

She has close ties to American evangelical dominionist Christian groups and is widely believed to be a force behind the bill.

…

Award-winning activist Frank Mugisha, of Sexual Minorities Uganda, said: ‘We see a shift in public opinion and I guess it’s because many Ugandans are talking about homosexuality a lot.

‘There are some local leaders who are now willing to meet and talk to us.

‘The only problem we have is the belief people have that we are promoting homosexuality and recruiting children.’

Mugisha’s group has filed suit in a US court in the first known Alien Tort Statute case seeking accountability for persecution on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The website of the Uganda Joint Christian Council remarkably states the Council “has continued to report solid progress since its inception in 1963 to build a society that harmoniously co-exists and promotes, protects, respects and upholds human dignity.” It adds that the “UJCC consists of the Church of Uganda, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Uganda Orthodox Church who are the founder members and whose faith is based on authentic teaching of the Bible and the Apostles’ Creed and accepts baptism by water in the name of the Trinity.”

“The Bill is at committee level and hopefully it will soon be brought back to the House for discussion. We are determined to fight to the end,” Mr Bahati said, according to the report in the Daily Monitor:

The anti-gay Bill has seen ups and downs with donors and international activists threatening to withhold aid should it be let to pass.

Among some of the propositions in the Bill was one of death and life sentence for those for those caught engaging in homosexuality for a second time.

However, Mr Bahati said these penalties had since been removed from the Bill.

In fact, those “penalties” — i.e., death or life in prison — have not been removed from the official version of the bill, contrary to reports in the media and assertions by Bahati. Bahati is closely related to the Washington, D.C.-based politico-religious house on C Street, known as “The Family.”

NOM's Robert George also is on the board of the Family Research Council, an SPLC-certified anti-gay hate group. When California Congressman Brad Sherman proposed a congressional resolution against the Ugandan "Kill the gays" bill, and Uganda's general bad treatment of homosexuals, George/FRC spent $25,000 lobbying *against* the resolution, on grounds it constituted "pro-homosexual promotion."

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MykelbarberJune 12, 2012 at 3:42 pm

How about a bill to kill all the Catholics?

StanleyJamesAugust 26, 2012 at 7:19 am

Wrong – catholic people are also victims of this horrific Mytheology. I'm reminded that if we had blown up the riechstag in eg 1935, WWII would not have happened.

We have the opportunity to prevent a new type of western religion equivalent horror – in Rome.

If there was a god, the vatican would be long gone. It sits in Rome, a city built of 7 – hills of volcanic origin. the fault line is only about 50 miles east.

StanleyJamesAugust 26, 2012 at 7:16 am

what would you expect when the vatican is run by an ex member of the hitler youth corp.?

The catholic church has combined with the extremist islamic influence in Africa., eg the country of the former Edi Amin.

And with Dolans joining the republicans, we have the perfect example of how catholic charity is only for the rich and powerful, to hell with the middle class and the poor.

They knoe that the poorer you are, the more you will go to church for false hope. Their expected loss of contributions is nothing compared to the protection of their absolutist ideology which is little different then the taliban., except for the lack so far of ak47s

BTW the catholic church joins with the people of the repub for the most part NRA, whose merchants of death kill over 30,000 per year in america alone

Another example that “protecting life” to them is just another goebbels game – if you tell lies often enough they will be seen as the truth.

The church is all but dead in Europe, dying in Latin America. The USA is their battle of the bulge. The church gave the world the hatred of the Jews, which morphed into the holocaust and WWII and 55 million deaths

it as also the church of the xtian crusades, that over 500 years killed tens of millions of Muslims. NO wonder some of them hate us. Societies have long memories

the Vat of horrors will do anything to protect their power and money. The next murderous INquisition is at hand. Wait till we find them joining with the taliban.

Religious freedom is the curse of humanity., the vatican is the curse of the western world.

As Diederot said during the french revolution 1789, to break the back of the cabal of church and state, Mankind will be free when the last king is strangled with the guts of the last priest

the kings are mostly gone or powerless. Too bad we ran out of them before we ran out of priests